Why this Pākehā celebrates Te Tiriti

When we arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand from the UK on New Year’s Eve 2011 to begin a new life, the realisation that we had left everything behind filled us with trepidation, but we were hopeful our new country would offer us the life we wanted.

We decided to leave because the UK was becoming increasingly small-minded, mean-spirited and socially divisive. This had been exacerbated by the Conservative government’s pursuit of austerity in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, an event caused by the very economic orthodoxy it was devoted to. Instead of challenging their approach, the government realised the crisis was a great opportunity to defund public services and the welfare state, a project they began in 1979.

As ever more money was sucked out of the economy and moved upwards, and as the UK government increasingly became a partisan institution designed to benefit its doners, the political tactic was to deflect attention downwards at the most vulnerable and precarious people in society – all the while adding a tinge of xenophobia and racism as the government targeted foreigners, migrants and refugees as the cause of everyone’s ills.

That is why we left and we were glad we did, especially when the government’s strategy of ‘blame the foreigners’ led to Brexit. Of course, Aotearoa does not quite live up to its progressive, 100% pure branding, but it is a fantastic country.

As we gradually acclimatised to our adopted land I remember asking myself, “Should I ever become a citizen (which we did), what would make me proud to say I’m a New Zealander?”

Being the first country to give women the vote was certainly something I could point to, but what or where would be my tūrangawaewae? What would be my place to stand, the element that would provide connection and identity?

As I learned more about the country, I realised the Treaty was something special and the more I’ve come to understand the beauty of te ao Māori, the more the Treaty has come to mean for me. Its uniqueness is extraordinary. The fact that it represents an agreement between two worlds to work together and share a land for mutual benefit and security is remarkable, especially when those two worlds are so alien.

No other country has such a partnership with its Indigenous people. Last year, Australia decided it was still 1950 and rejected a referendum offering Indigenous Australians – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – even minimal political representation. No other country, then, has a foundational document that comes close to the risk, the courage and the faith that this document represents. I also find it incredibly hopeful that I can find a foothold for my identity as a Pākehā New Zealander in an agreement with a culture so different to my own.

As the world seems to fall deeper into divisive and chauvinistic identity politics, encouraged by politicians who don’t want us to look up and ask questions of them, the spirit of dialogue and encounter embedded in the Treaty offers something invaluable. In contrast to the racism, nationalism and colonial revisionism of so much contemporary politics, it offers something radically different.

It’s what makes this country unique and so very special. It is what stops us from becoming just another outpost of neoliberal homogenisation, another franchise in the ever-expanding empire of consumer culture. In fact, through the Treaty, we have a partner who can show us a different way of being in the world that is in stark contrast to an economy built on waste, resource depletion, pollution and disrespect. This country is different precisely because of this

.It is also what enables Aotearoa New Zealand to potentially have a profound influence on the world stage in the future. The threat of climate catastrophe requires countries to join together and cooperate. This will need sophisticated translation skills, as worlds that are quite different, with significantly divergent values and beliefs, will need to find common ground.

Here, with years of careful deliberation in arenas like the Waitangi Tribunal, we can offer a world-leading model of how two seemingly incompatible cultures have found a way to speak together, even if one has done a lot of the talking and not much listening until more recent decades.

While the process has flaws, it offers something positive, incomparable and unequalled in political history. Unfortunately, the recent election has established a coalition of regressive forces arrayed against it.

Act leader David Seymour only recently, and openly, wrote about erasing the difference enshrined in the Treaty. His claim that this is not about ‘race’ is disingenuous when Act’s Treaty Principles Bill would undermine any influence te ao Māori might have on the future governance of Aotearoa. His plan is to replace it with a concept of sovereignty cut and pasted from any Libertarian primer.

He talks about the colonialism of the state without any sense of irony that his concept of universalism is an updated version of the colonial mentality that settlers arrived with. He claims the idea of ‘partnership’ is relatively new, but that’s only because the Crown belatedly came to accept its responsibilities with regard to the Treaty, having ignored them for more than a century after the signing.

So, I’m proud to identify as Tangata Tiriti and precisely because of the difference it enshrines. Its uniqueness is what sets it apart, and as a model for cultural dialogue, it offers us hope for the future.